Rs: you said you had something to add to the variety of your shabbos experiences.
yr: yes. after the world trade center went down in the heat of the intifadeh, pro palestinian leftists used to gather on saturdays in union square park and i used to heckle them.
RS: sounds like fun.
yr: not really, but i have an addictive personality and one of my addictions is anger and i certainly got my dose most saturdays heckling the leftists.
RS: what does this have to do with shabbos?
yr: well obviously as i said it took place on saturday, so the most obvious candidates for counter demonstrations, the orthodox, were eliminated from contention and thus i felt it was in my portion as one who is willing to break the sabbath to meet their demonstration head to head.
rs: so shabbos made it your turf?
yr: yes, but it was more than that. there's a zimra called kol m'kadesh sh'vi'i, which in my day had no tune and was thus sung only by my grandfather, but every saturday when i was heading out to head to the subway to head to heckle the leftists i sang the first verse of that song, with its lyric, "every man to his camp, every man according to his flag." and i felt that i was going to assert the jewish flag and the song spoke to me.
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